Photonic sensor technologies enable precision and versatility in sensing across multiple domains. The integration into multimodal systems enhances data accuracy, speed and reliability. Advancements in photonic sensors and their multimodal integration aim to elevate diagnostics, monitoring, and sensing by improving efficiency, performance, and reliability while reducing size and manufacturing costs and power consumption.

The development of sensor technologies and multimodal integration is closely aligned with several key EU policies. These include achieving open strategic autonomy in digital and emerging enabling technologies, enhancing Europe's technological sovereignty, and supporting the twin transition to a digital and green economy by promoting energy-efficient, competitive, and resilient digital infrastructures.

The initiative also aims to advance the digital transformation by providing access to high-quality environmental data, supporting the development of technologies for privacy, compliance, and data integrity to empower decision-making and foster a fair data economy.

Lastly, it contributes to the green transition by leveraging photonic sensor technologies for environmental monitoring and sustainable practices. It aligns with the EU's objectives for a green and digital economy, enhancing system operations and promoting innovation in eco-friendly practices, thus strengthening Europe's technological leadership for societal and economic progress.

Projects are expected to contribute to at least three of the following outcomes to fully exploit the potential of photonics for a digital, green and healthy future in Europe:

• Increase the efficiency of developed photonic sensors, surpassing existing technologies in aspects such as energy consumption, data acquisition and processing speed, as well as measurement accuracy.
• Significantly reduce the size, weight, or footprint of the sensors and quantify advancements over current technologies.
• Improve both intrinsic and extrinsic performance metrics to boost measurement accuracy for at least three use-case scenarios.
• Extend the sensing and testing capabilities of photonic sensors by linking optical with non-optical measurement parameters (e.g. for acoustic sensing or electromagnetic sensing).
• Contribute to reducing manufacturing costs and increasing resource-efficiency, while also enhancing reliability and durability of the targeted sensor systems.

They are additionally expected to:

• Help secure the open strategic autonomy for Europe by ensuring intellectual property and production means of key technologies are maintained within the EU, reducing dependencies and enhancing negotiation power in technological cooperation.
• Help maximise international competitiveness by increasing the uptake and translation of photonic technologies into new products and services, guided by key technology requirements.

Scope:

The scope of this topic focuses on the advancement and application of photonic sensor technologies and their integration into multimodal systems. Proposals are expected to address the development of sensor technologies and their validation through trials in realistic use cases. This includes exploring multi-modal sensor capabilities, as well as employing sensor fusion and machine learning approaches for the analysis of sensor data. Techniques should address at least two different technology approaches, i.e. sensor modalities, of which at least one must be photonic from the following areas:

• 3D sensing and imaging such as LIDAR, optical coherence tomography (OCT), optical tomography, interferometry, photoacoustics, etc.
• Communication fiber sensing
• Chemical and gas sensing   
• Bio- and medical sensing and/or imaging  
• Particle sensing   
• Integrated photonic solutions

In addition, the proposals could focus on developing and integrating algorithms designed to enhance the processing capabilities and decision-making accuracy of photonic sensors. These algorithms may help to optimize the interpretation of complex sensor data, enable real-time analytics, ambient intelligence and adaptive responses in dynamic environments.

Furthermore, projects should aim to provide significant improvements in one or more of the application domains listed below and to demonstrate these in at least three use case scenarios. Demonstrators would be expected to reach TRL 4-5 while the photonic techniques would be developed up to TRL 7.

This expectation underlines the call's objective to foster innovations that have a substantial and beneficial impact on society and various industry sectors:

• Healthcare (medical diagnostics, disinfection, treatment through improved imaging techniques and diagnostic accuracy).
• Transportation Safety (enhanced safety features in automotive and aerospace industries through better sensing capabilities).
• Industrial efficiency and sustainability (industrial processes such as manufacturing, quality control, increasing precision and automation through improved sensing technologies).
• Agricultural/Food Sector (precision agriculture, food safety, food waste reduction and supply chain management through improved sensing techniques for monitoring crop health, detecting contaminants, and optimizing production processes and raw material utilisation).
• Environmental Monitoring and sustainable energy (pollution monitoring, climate research, renewable energy infrastructure and natural disaster mitigation).
• Security, safety and resilience of people and critical infrastructure (face identification, long distance observation by day and night, (infra-)structural health monitoring, chemical and gas sensing, explosive detection)
• Protection and efficient operation of optical communications, risk management of data transport and processing including increased resilience to cyber security.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business scenario and exploitation strategy.

Research must build on existing standards or contribute to standardisation. Where relevant, interoperability for data sharing should be addressed.

All projects should build on or seek collaboration with existing projects and develop synergies with other relevant European, national or regional initiatives, funding programmes and platforms, in particular the Digital Europe Programme (DEP).